Kev Ryan - Artist, Photographer, Activist

Artist and photographer Kev Ryan of Charnwood Arts

Photograph: Paul Conneally, All Saints Parish Church, Loughborough

Thomas Walker - Artist Curator

 Thomas Walker - Artist Curator -Loughborough - 2015

Artist, Thomas Walker, is caught getting snapped by photographer Kev Ryan on the stairs of Sofa in Loughbohemia (some call it Loughborough) where the artist led exhibition 'Nine Frames', organised by Walker, was taking place.

Photograph: Paul Conneally 2015

Contextually Happy

Contextually Happy - Paul Conneally December 2 2015

Contextually Unhappy - Paul Conneally December 2 2015

Both windows are in the old Towles Building, a former hosiery factory in Loughborough, UK.

The building is a 'locally' listed building. In the Charnwood Borough Council listing one part of the building in terms of fenestration (windows) and brickwork is described as 'contextually unhappy'. The other part of the building we must assume is then 'contextually happy'.

I visited the building, which now hosts the wonderful furniture recycling charity SOFA, to see the Nine Frames Project, a project that sees part of the top floor host an 'unrestricted' art show and happening space devised and curated by artist Thomas Walker with other art students from Loughborough University. It was in preparing for this visit, with artist photographer Kev Ryan of Charnwood Arts, that I discovered the official listing description of the building and for the first time the term 'contextually unhappy'. It immediately struck home with me, it's unwritten counterpoint too 'contextually happy'.

A text piece came to mind the words 'CONTEXTUALLY UNHAPPY' perhaps on a banner, hand painted or otherwise on a bed sheet or some other substrate or echoing the nearby Brush factory, a neon sign, hung on the unhappy side of the building. Another 'CONTEXTUALLY HAPPY' hung on the happy side of the building, the Nottingham Road frontage, straight opposite the busy T-junction if possible.

It opens the possibility of a psychogeography type, a splacist drift, through areas labelling stuff contextually happy or unhappy, based on our own reaction to things in relation to other things around them.

Catalogues and maps.

Talking it through with Kev I begin to get drawn more to the 'CONTEXTUALLY HAPPY' slogan.

Yes I'd wear a T-Shirt with that on it. Better make some.

Paul Conneally
Loughborough, UK
December 3, 2015

Additional Material:

 

Charnwood Borough Council Local Listing Text:

"Hosiery Factory. Late C19 with C20 addition (on Clarence St). Red/brown brick with piers and terra-cotta cornice surmounting stone string course. Quite plain. Substantial stone dressed neoclassical entrance set within rounded corner ?tower? linking workshops. Flat roof with upstanding parapet and shaped gable to corner tower. 3 storeys. 10 bays fronting Nottingham Road, 6 bays fronting Clarence St (excluding extension). Prominent square boiler stack with corbelled head. Original small paned metal windows largely preserved. Extension in style of original but fenestration and brick colour contextually unhappy."

The Agony And Ecstasy Of Collegiate Sumo Training In Japan - Charnwood Museum

Scene from the opening of "Asa Geiko" an exhibition by Francis Harrison

The Agony And Ecstasy Of Collegiate Sumo Training In Japan

Charnwood Arts presents a unique documentary photo series on the brutal, rarely glimpsed training of amateur sumo training at a major Tokyo university.

The exhibition, called "Asa Geiko" (Morning Practice), is the work of Francis Harrison, a photographer and long-time resident of Japan.

Shot in moody monochrome, the photographs recall photo essays by Eugene Smith and others during the heyday of Life Magazine.

Francis Harrison describes the project thus:

"I was attracted to traditional themes as a counterpoint to the soullessness and wholesale Westernisation so prevalent in modern Japan.

My early background in the martial arts naturally led me to an orthodox sumo club at an agricultural college near my home, where I was eventually allowed to shoot freely by the coach, a fiercely traditional man.

What struck me from the start was the aura of discipline and sacrifice that suffused the place. Long periods of stretching and limbering up would be interrupted by instants of total violence, none of it personal but totally committed nonetheless.

Over time, I was deeply moved by the dedication of these young men, most of whom would never make it to the Pros while punishing their bodies sometimes with lasting effect.

My promise to the coach was to give an accurate representation of genuine sumo to the outside world, where so often the sport is seen as "fat babies in diapers", and I only hope that I have kept my promise and done justice to these powerful athletes."

The exhibition is divided into three phases: "Preparation", "Combat" and "Contemplation" reflecting the various parts and moods of any given practice session. Through these stages one can catch glimpses of an older Japan where ancestral voices predominate...

Text: Charnwood Arts
Photo: Paul Conneally

Morning Practice - The Agony and Ecstasy of Sumo Training in Japan

Morning Practice - The Agony and Ecstasy of Sumo Training in Japan
This is a wonderful and not to be missed exhibition of photographs by Francis Harrison.

The exhibition is put on by Charnwood Arts / Pixel & Grain at Charnwood Museum, Loughborough, UK and runs from the 7th of October to the 1st of November 2015.

Free Entry

Paul Conneally
Sept. 2015

Rama Gupta - Environmental Activist and Thinker

Rama Gupta - Environmental Activist and Thinker

Photo: Paul Conneally Loughborough 2015

Got A Funny Feeling

be smiling
be imaginative
you're getting a funny feeling
that you're falling in love

from the third work from #wevegotashow

More here: http://issuu.com/charnwoodarts/docs/weve-got-a-show

The Sound Of Water - Richard Thornton - Paul Conneally - Jemma Bagley

Metal benches designed and made by sculptor Richard Thornton with words, fragments of haiku, written by members of the local community with artist poet Paul Conneally, laser cut into them.

They are in the community recreation area of the Watermead housing development in Thurmaston, Charnwood, Leicestershire.

The work was coordinated by community artist Jemma Bagley from the wonderful arts organisation Charnwood Arts. Jemma also brought together a book out of the project called The Sound Of Water which was distributed free to hundreds of people in the area featuring poems and walks undertaken as part of the commission.

Trees Spreading Their Arms

Two women sit on one of the water drop shaped metal benches in Thurmaston made by sculptor Richard Thornton with a haiku fragment written during the Charnwood Arts project The Sound Of Water workshops that I led with massive support from Jemma Bagley. The words we decided upon are laser cut into the bench, in fact they are cut out of the bench.

The words that these young Muslim women sit on are 'trees spreading their arms'. I'd like to feel that our communities across Charnwood are like these trees, spreading their arms to welcome new members into them, wherever they are from.



Paul Conneally
April 2015

Loughborough by the Sea - Paul Gent

Sun, Sea and Socks! - Paul Gent

Artist Paul Gent imagines Loughbohemia, currently landlocked, as it might be if global warming and the melting of the ice caps continues.

Paul Conneally